𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄! percy jackson¹

001. the minotaur

chapter one
001. the minotaur

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      "CLAIRE! HURRY UP!"

      "I'm coming!"

      I pulled at the laces of my boots, curling the white string around my wrists. Around me, Cabin Seven was chaos. Everyone was struggling to prepare themselves for the early morning. Discarded clothes were everywhere, the bathroom sinks were littered with toiletries, multiple siblings fought for the middle position and best view of the mirror, and I think there was a brewing pillow fight on the other side of the cabin. Lee Fletcher, the cabin counsellor, was making a feeble attempt to ready everyone for breakfast, and like always, we were running late. ADHD and running on time don't exactly mix. There are two options. Either we arrive way too early or too late, but never on time (both fashionable entrances, however▬which, in the end, is what we truly strive for). Once I finished tying my shoelaces, I jumped to my feet from the end of my bed. From the chest on the end of my bed, I grabbed my dagger, slipped it into the sheath wrapped around my right calf, and threw on a windbreaker over my orange camp shirt. I rushed to snatch my bow and quiver of arrows before racing towards an exasperated Lee Fletcher.

      Different is a word I liked to define myself by. It's a word everyone who is at this camp is accustomed to or at least has heard at some point in their lives so far. At Camp Half-Blood, everything is different. We are different from the majority of the everyday person on Earth. Everyone was an individual▬unique to the person who stood next to them. But at Camp Half-Blood, the individuality was tuned up to a far greater scale. 

    (Before I tell you who we are, I want to state this right now. If you recognise yourself in these pages at any time, if you feel your gut twist and your breath catch, if you feel something deep and indescribable stir inside you, my advice to you is: Close the tab on this book right now, find a weapon, and come to the address on the business card hidden in the pages of this book▬if you are one of us, you will find it. And then, once you know that, it is only a matter of time before they figure it out, too, and once they do, they'll come and find you. 

    Don't say I didn't warn you...).

    Because we aren't just the average person trying to live a normal life. We are all the children of Greek Gods. Yes, those Greek Gods. We are Demigods: Half-human, half-god. And the life we live is not one for the faint of heart.

     My half-siblings and I are the children of Apollo: The god of music, poetry, medicine, plague, prophecies, light ... you get it.

      I've been at this camp since I was seven. It's longer than most (if most are lucky to make it in the first place). Even before then, I spent a year and a half on the streets with three of my closest friends Luke, Thalia and Annabeth, on the run from monsters wherever we went. Different is all I've known to the point where it has become my normal. My life before everything changed sometimes felt like more of a dream rather than a reality, and sometimes I'm not too sure whether what I remember actually happened or was simply composed from my imagination to try and make it easier for a six-year-old's mind to understand. Those years easily merge into a blur of events in my mind until we were found by Grover, a satyr (half-goat, half-human). He led us here to Camp Half-Blood for our safety. 

     Not all of us made it. On Half-blood Hill, we were attacked by the Furies, Hades' torturers and Thalia sacrificed herself so that we could get through. As she died, her father, Zeus, turned her into a pine tree, which kept a magical barrier around the camp so we all could be safe.